


Introduction to the Snow

by multifandommonster



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, i just like talking about this godforsaken movie, there will be no real slash, this is just a way for me to get out Feelings without committing to long fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-24 15:48:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30074589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/multifandommonster/pseuds/multifandommonster
Summary: An ongoing work of one-shot drabbles, entirely under 1000 words each.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	1. Of Those Burnt by the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> this is for my brainstorming, as I like to receive feedback on my writing but I have been struggling with writer's block. please leave some comments/criticism, this truly is just a public way for me to force myself to meet my writing goals!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mallorie was never meant to last.

_ You've waited for forever and a day _

_ Just to die _

_ And someday soon you will die _

Arthur meets Mallorie when he is a bright-eyed seventeen; he has the youthful innocence of a dandelion fresh from the earth, a weed that hasn’t yet had the chance to wilt in the chill and rise in the spring. He is reaching towards the sun, flowering, begging and grasping, and it is her lightning fingers that find him first.

Mallorie takes him into her chest until he knows no other house of bones- she is liquid fire, striking the dirt that his roots are sheltered in and burrowing until Arthur has no choice but to follow her current. Ideas spill from her coated in ozone, scorching down his spine as he races to write every word down; oh, how he aches to transcribe her. From the moment he met her, Arthur knew that Mallorie could not be forever. 

He is nineteen chasing the heels of petrichor in a red dress-- Arthur knows her first. 

Knows her last, even.

_ Oh, it was the only woman you ever loved _

_ That got burnt by the sun too often when she was young _

_ And the cancer spread, it ran into her body and her blood _

_ And there is nothing you can do about it now. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from "Blood" by The Middle East. EDDIEVEN0M on twt.


	2. The Mute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur likes to take notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> arthur is autistic because I Said So

_ And they thought me broken, that my tongue was coated lead _

_ But I just couldn't make my words make sense to them _

_ If you only listen with your ears I can't get in _

  


Arthur likes to take notes. 

  


He relies on the physicality of writing things down— can’t remember something without a list or a smudge on the palm of his hand. He finds an unfathomable comfort in crossing off boxes from his list, a habit that makes him seem far too straight-laced for their profession, but it runs much deeper than that.  When he was younger he had dozens of notebooks filled cover-to-cover, each one with a different specific purpose and outlet for Arthur’s wandering mind. His father didn’t know how to handle Arthur’s  _ episodes,  _ so Arthur found himself writing them all down with a desperate hope that it would one day make sense to someone— that maybe if he could just choose the right words, he wouldn't be crazy anymore. 

  


The words never came, but the habit stuck. Writing became the only way that Arthur could contain and control the intense spiral of tangled emotion in his chest— the sadness he couldn't understand, the anger he couldn't release, the happiness that he couldn't share. Writing helped him understand others, too; Arthur could puzzle out the actions of people the same way he could solve a math problem, and then in bright black ink he'd have a record of it for later.  He can’t afford to carry hoards of them now; physical evidence of marks and clients are a death sentence, so he crams it all in single moleskine notebooks. Each page is delicate, written on with a special pen (he’s ruthless about ink bleeding, has a very specific pen preference). The methodology to his note-taking borders on ritualistic: he numbers pages that are related and restarts with the next job, he keeps headings and titles for every page, slants his writing into scrawled italics for emphasis like one would with a computer. He supposes it would be easier if he used his laptop- much easier to erase, more confident to protect- but he aches for the comfort of his moleskine. Pen to paper is his only constant, his singular allowed familiarity.

  


There are concerned looks from many of those initial green extractors, anger from a few micromanaging chemists and architects, always and forever worried about the law catching up and finding evidence. But Arthur won’t back down— his moleskine is an extension of him, a thread in the very fabric of his being. He feels incapable without it. 

  


_ And I set out on the heels of the unknown _

_ So my folks could have a new life of their own _

_ So that maybe I could find someone _

_ Who could hear the only words that I'd known _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title and lyrics from "The Mute" by Radical Face. EDDIEVEN0M on twt.

**Author's Note:**

> chapter title from "Blood" by The Middle East. EDDIEVEN0M on twitter. come hang!


End file.
